Joshua Tree

April 22, 2012          Mileage: 740

East Bound for Joshua Tree. 

We started making our way up towards the 10 freeway towards Indio to pick up my Aussie friend Katy after her long weekend at the Coachella music festival to come along for the ride for a while before she headed back down to Mexico where she had been living for the past few months.

Of course we were running late to pick her up at the Walmart she had been dropped off at, and then to top it off our truck randomly and instantly stops while going uphill... Mind you she has no phone or way to reach her so she was basically stranded there. 

Luckily we were on a side road leaving Fallbrook after we stopped through to grab a couple of forgotten items, and there was a fridge full of nerve remedies. We backed the truck up into a safe spot and made the first of many AAA calls of the journey. 

We scored with the service tech and got ol' Joe, the friendly hippie who had no problem overseeing our strange battery problem until he found the source of loose connector bolts that weren't able to supply any connection to the battery. After an hour of waiting for his arrival and an hour of trying to figure out what was wrong with the truck, we were on our way. Thanks Joe!

We picked up Katy a mere five hours after we told her we would be there. She was content on the corner of the supercenter, shoeless and clearly just having left a music festival, with all of her belongings stuffed inside a shopping cart.

We honked and hollered over hellos and apologies. She wheeled her cart over, unloaded, and off we went. Finally, onto Joshua Tree!

I can’t express my love for this place enough. It is the land before time, you feel like a gang of baby dinosaurs are going to peak their heads out behind the rocks at any time. With boulder-rock mountains and wacky palm-like Joshua trees, this desert oasis is one of the most magical places on earth. We got there at a great time in the year, with few and dispersed campers, a mild temperature, and cactus flowers in bloom. 

We spent a week in Joshua Tree, settling into our camper life. The problems with the truck and camper began to arise while we were there. Our water pump began leaking (of course this happens in the desert) and the house batteries for the camper were not working so all of our power was dependant on the truck. We working around these rather major problems by removing the water pump and emptying it into a 5 gallon tank for drinking water and a bucket for washing. Luckily we were still able to draw out water from the house tank, just no through the sink faucets. We started the truck regularly but with week-old batteries the lack of charge had not yet become a problem.

Our week in Joshua Tree was pretty magical. We cooked amazing meals over our campfire every night, took many hikes through the desert, and watched galaxy glimmer through the lightless sky. The full moon rose and turned the boulder filled valley into a blue-lit wonderland. We washed our clothes in buckets and hung them to dry on our little folding drying rack.

Katy unfortunately took a turn for the worse while we were there. She began feeling very sick with high temperatures. 

Sadly, we lost her.

Just Kidding

She made me promise not to take photos of her while sick in bed. I did get this outline of her while soaking up heat after a cold spell, resuming her deathly sprawl on pavement.

We played nurse for her, trying to keep her temperature down but she didn’t feel ready to go to the hospital. All the ginger tea, garlic bits, and cold compresses in the world coudn't make this girl feel better. Heinz sight I should have insisted on the emergency room, but at the time I was under her influence that she would recover quickly, but needed something to quench the thirst, and water wasn't doing it. She needed electrolytes badly as she seemed very dehydrated. She would feel better then a few hours later she’d be bed ridden again. We decided to ride our bikes into town to get her some electrolytes and supplies.

We started biking into town, thinking it would be about 15 miles. Well turned out it was 25, the last 5 or 6 being extremely downhill. It was too late to turn back then so we forged ahead. We got her some electrolytes and tinctures and whatever else she asked for. When we stepped outside to begin riding again, the heat hit us like a bag of bricks. We were exhausted. My knee was hurting pretty badly and Rob was rather chafed. Needless to say the intial 6 miles we needed to go uphill was seeming rather impossible.

We began our assent, knowing that catching a ride back would be our best bet, although a challenging one. I figured anyone going to Joshua Tree would have a full car, and possibly be their first time there. my positive thinking mantra was not speaking to me. I was seriously doubting anyone would want to pick up 2 strangers... With their bikes. But low and behold, luck struck! Thank you thank you thank you. A VW Vanagon passed by us while we were struggling uphill. Rob quickly stuck out his thumb and the van gave us a friendly honk, thinking Rob was flashing a thumbs-up. Fortunately for us, they pulled over a bit further up and waited for us to ride up to them. We let them know my knee was hurt and we would greatly appreciate a ride, as we did not realize 6 miles of uphill would be a big deal. Ah, life lessons. The two girls in the van said to hop in, and took us and our bikes the 25 miles all the way back to our campsite at the last campground in the park, Jumbo Rock.

Their names were Emily Edge and Crystal Rain. No joke. This radical duo were living in Joshua Tree, working at the gift shop, the Coyote Corner, and the neighboring Pub. We loaded Katy up with her meds and sat at the picnic table with our desert angels, sharing homemade lemoncello and beers and trading stories. Crystal told us how she spent the summers working in Skagway Alaska, and offered us connections for work when we get up there. She introduced the idea of taking a ferry either to of back from Alaska, getting us so excited for the unimaginable beauty of the last American frontier’s coastline on the “poor man’s cruise.” I noticed Emily’s gorgeous hummingbird tattoo and we chatted away on our connections to the little creature as one of our spirit animals. As she was telling me about her obsession with the ghost moth, one landed on the brim of my hats in mid-conversation. It was as though the moth was solidifying our friendship and the beauty of the universe lending a helping hand through the kindness of good people.

We headed out the next morning and popped into the gift shop where Crystal and Emily were working. We soaped up and took much-needed showers, perused the shop where we looked through desert statistics, plant identification, and survival books. After a previous conversation about how the boulder mountains were formed, I found out in one of the books.

Through millions of years of an active terrain, volcanoes and earthquakes pushed up the earth, forming rock-mountains. As the earth's surface continued to move, cracks spidered up the mountains, creating gaps in the rocks. Over time, the high winds would sweep away loose rock and rubble, forming rounded mounds that appear to be boulders piled on top of one another. So cool.

We stocked up on stickers and bid the girls farewell, leaving them with a little hummingbird watercolor to say thanks for their kindness and advice. These ladies brought light to our lives in a rather parallous time, and gifted us with a loot of spots to visit and connections to make along the way. Thank you again girls.

After Joshua Tree we headed west on the 10, LA bound.